A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

Tag: Bailout

Way back in February of 2010, I wrote that a Greek bailout would be a failure. Not surprisingly, the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund and the political elite from other European nations ignored my advice and gave tens of billions of dollars to Greece’s corrupt politicians.

The bailout happened in part because politicians and international bureaucrats (when they’re not getting arrested for molesting hotel maids) have a compulsion to squander other people’s money. But it also should be noted that the Greek bailout was a way of indirectly bailing out the big European banks that recklessly lent money to a profligate government (as explained here).

At the risk of sounding smug, let’s look at my four predictions from February 2010 and see how I did.

1. The first prediction was that “Bailing out Greece will reward over-spending politicians and make future fiscal crises more likely.” That certainly seems to be the case since Europe is in even worse shape, so I’ll give myself a gold star.

2. The second prediction was that “Bailing out Greece will reward greedy and short-sighted interest groups, particularly overpaid government workers.” Given the refusal of Greek politicians to follow through with promised cuts and privatizations, largely because of domestic resistance, it seems I was right again. As such, I’ll give myself another pat on the back.

3. My third prediction was that “Bailing out Greece will encourage profligacy in Spain, Italy, and other nations.” Again, events certainly seem to confirm what I warned about last year, so let’s put this one in the win column as well.

4. Last but not least, my fourth prediction was that “Bailing out Greece is not necessary to save the euro.” Well, since everybody is now talking about two possible non-bailout options—either a Greek default (a “restructuring” in PC terms) or a Greek return to using the drachma—and acknowledging that neither is a threat to the euro, it seems I batted 4-4 in my predictions.

But there’s no reward for being right. Especially when making such obvious predictions about the failure of big-government policies. So now we’re back where we were early last year, with Greece looking for another pile of money. Here’s a brief blurb from Reuters.

The European Union is racing to draft a second bailout package for Greece to release vital loans next month and avert the risk of the euro zone country defaulting, EU officials said on Monday.

If this second bailout happens (and it probably will), then I will make four new predictions. But I don’t need to spell them out because they’ll be the same ones I made last year.

We’ve reached the lather-rinse-repeat stage of fiscal collapse for the welfare state.

There’s a great piece in the spring issue of The Independent Review on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke by San Jose State Professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel. Although a bit long, its well worth the read for anyone wanting to understand both Bernanke’s thinking and his actions during and since the financial crisis.

First, Prof. Hummel discusses the differences between Bernanke’s and Milton Friedman’s explanations for the Great Depression. Those that debate whether Bernanke’s actions, especially the quantitative easings, would be approved of by Friedman will get a lot out of this discussion. From this comparison, you get the point that Friedman was concerned about overall credit conditions and liquidity, whereas Bernanke is less focused on the monetary factors than on the impairment of credit intermediation, which explains his support of selective bailouts.

Hummel’s comparison of Greenspan and Bernanke is also insightful, particularly since many (myself included) often lump the two’s policies together. From the analysis, it is clear that Greenspan falls into the Friedman camp, his “rescues” were of the financial system in general, and not of specific firms.

One might say a bailout is a bailout, so what’s the difference between rescuing the system and rescuing individual firms within the system? Certainly that’s a view I have some sympathy for. The “Greenspan put” was as much a contributor to reckless risk-taking as anything else. Hummel, however, discuses why this difference ultimately matters, and why it shows Bernanke to fit the role of economic central planner. In short, the facts are presented that during the financial crisis, Bernanke did not actually increase overall liquidity by much, he re-directed it to those firms he deemed most important. This process of reducing liquidity to some sectors while re-directing it to others, arguably less efficient sectors, goes a considerable distance in explaining some of the decline in both aggregate demand and consumption in 2008.

Again, the piece is one of the more accessible and insightful I’ve read on Bernanke in quite a while.

The U.S. Postal Service is in financial trouble. Undermined by advances in electronic communication, weighed down by excessive labor costs and operationally straitjacketed by Congress, the government’s mail monopoly is running on fumes and faces large unfunded liabilities. Socialism apparently has its limits.

While the Europeans continue to shift away from government-run postal monopolies toward market liberalization, policymakers in the United States still have their heads stuck in the twentieth century. That means looking for an easy way out, which in Washington usually means a bailout.

Self-interested parties – including the postal unions, mailers, and postal management – have coalesced around the notion that the U.S. Treasury owes the USPS somewhere around $50-$75 billion. (Of course, “U.S. Treasury” is just another word for “taxpayers.”) Policymakers with responsibility for overseeing the USPS have introduced legislation that would require the Treasury to credit it with the money.

Explaining the background and validity of this claim is very complicated. Fortunately, Michael Schuyler, a seasoned expert on the USPS for the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, has produced such a paper.

At issue is whether the USPS “unfairly” overpaid on pension obligations for particular employees under the long defunct Civil Service Retirement System. The USPS’s inspector-general has concluded that the USPS is owed the money. The Office of Personnel Management, which administers the pensions of federal government employees, and its inspector-general have concluded otherwise. Again, it’s complicated and Schuyler’s paper should be read to understand the ins and outs.

Therefore, I’ll simply conclude with Schuyler’s take on what the transfer would mean for taxpayers:

Given the frighteningly large federal deficit and the mushrooming federal debt, a $50-$75 billion credit to the Postal Service and debit to the U.S. Treasury will be a difficult sell, politically and economically. Although some advocates of a $50-$70 billion transfer assert it would be “an internal transfer of surplus pension funds” that would allow the Postal Service to fund promised retiree health benefits “at no cost to taxpayers,” the reality is that the transfer would shift more obligations to Treasury, which would increase the already heavy burden on taxpayers, who ultimately pay Treasury’s bills. (The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepares the official cost estimates for bills before Congress. Judging by how it has scored some earlier postal bills, CBO would undoubtedly report that the transfer would increase the federal budget deficit.) For those attempting to reduce the federal deficit, the transfer would be a $50-$70 billion setback.

Sounds like a bailout to me.

See this Cato essay for more on the U.S. Postal Service and why policymakers should be moving toward privatization.

MIT Professor Simon Johnson recently argued that Bill Daley’s appointment as Obama’s Chief of Staff signals that “too big to fail,” as it relates to our largest financial institutions, is here to stay. Personally I never thought it was in doubt. With Geithner at Treasury and Dodd-Frank further codifiying “too big to fail,” its been clear for some time that the bailout net is larger than it’s ever been, and is not being pulled back.

That said, Professor Johnson’s focus on Daley distracts from the real issue, which is changing our bank regulatory structure to end bailouts. The focus on Daley has the potential to lead us down that path of “if we just had the right people in government…” We shouldn’t be designing our regulatory structures with the “right” people in mind, but rather with the rule of law in mind. In fact, one of the benefits of the Obama administration is that it serves as a great test of the “right people” hypothesis of government. One is unlikely to see a more left-leaning White House than this one, so if this one gets captured by special interests, including Wall Street, than it’s a safe bet that any future administration will as well.

Since I believe most of us actually want to end “too big to fail,” the real question is how to do it. It strikes me that we have three options: regulate the largest institutions to death (or competitive disadvantage), break them up, or credibly impose losses on their creditors. Ultimately I think the regulation approach is bound to fail, if for no other reason than regulatory capture. (Even Elizabeth Warren seems to get this: “Regulations, over time, fail. I want to see Congress focus more on a credible system for liquidating the banks that are considered too big to fail.”) Breaking them up might sound attractive in theory, but I have a hard time seeing how it truly works in practice. After all, few in Washington viewed Bear Stearns as “too big to fail.” Accordingly, I believe the best approach would be to force creditors to take losses or be converted into equity. To make this credible, we must bind the hands of the regulators. As long as the Fed, Treasury, or the FDIC can inject money, then bailouts are always on the table.

Sadly, what the Daley appointment reminds us is that any attempt to end “too big to fail” will likely have to wait until the next administration. Not only is this one wed to bailouts, the President would likely veto any bill that really tied the hands of the Fed.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the meaning of GM’s IPO today. A common narrative in today’s media is that GM’s return to the stock market affirms the wisdom of the auto bailout. Some tougher customers in the media insist on a higher threshold being met—that taxpayers get back the entirety of their $50 billion investment in GM—before declaring “mission accomplished.” And then there are the rabid partisans who—in their seething animosity toward the Obama administration—reach conclusions devoid of logic and rich only in conspiratorial-mindedness. For example, yesterday I was contacted by a media outlet vetting this conclusion: “The IPO is evidence of the failure of the bailout because taxpayers were excluded from buying shares at the IPO price and, therefore, denied the opportunity to get their money back.” Huh?

All of those analyses are wrong. Let me dispense with the last one first, as it simply betrays a gross misunderstanding of how taxpayers are on the hook. By divesting of GM (i.e., selling its shares), the government is beginning to make the taxpayer whole. But just as there were no checks written directly from taxpayers to GM, there will be no checks written to taxpayers, as the Treasury liquidates the public’s share of GM. Whether main street Americans could participate in the IPO has nothing to do with making the taxpayer whole. And, by the way, IPOs typically limit sales of shares at the initial price to a chosen few. So let’s just shelve the canned indignation on this claim. It’s a distraction.

Here’s the real issue. Today’s IPO is nothing more than testament to the fact that the government threw GM a lifeline, enabling the company to expunge most of its debts and firm up its balance sheet on terms more favorable than a normal bankruptcy process would have yielded. That enabled GM to partake of the cyclically growing U.S. auto market in 2010 and turn a profit through the first three quarters. So what? Did anyone really think that a chosen company so coddled and insulated from market realities couldn’t turn a short-run profit? Yes, even GM, under those favorable conditions should have been expected to turn a profit this year.

But at what cost? That answer—even the question—seems to be elusive in the public discussion of the IPO. The cost was not only $50 billion—the amount diverted to GM in the first place. Nor was it that $50 billion minus the proceeds raised in today’s IPO (and minus the proceeds raised later when the government divests entirely of GM – it will still hold 33% of GM after today). In other words, making taxpayers whole does not absolve the Bush and Obama administration’s for the auto intervention. Recouping the $50 billion only gets us partially out of the hole. (And I’m not even sure who “us” includes because the costs are so far reaching.)

Yes, GM is making sales and accounting for market share, but only at the expense of the other automakers. Had GM been forced to severely atrophy or liquidate, the other automakers would have had greater revenues, more market share, and probably higher profits). They would have been able to attract GM’s best engineers and line workers. They would have more money to invest in R&D and to lead the industry into the future. Instead, by keeping GM in the mix, some of those industry resources remain misallocated in a company that the evolutionary market process would have made smaller or extinct.

The auto industry wasn’t rescued with the GM bailout. GM was “rescued.” By rescuing GM, the government overrode market forces, and there are significant costs to assign for that. Witness the stagnant economy with 9.6 percent unemployment. Is it not plausible that businesses are sitting on their cash and not investing or hiring because of the fear inspired by the government interventions starting with the bank and auto bailouts? It’s more than plausible. The regime uncertainty that persists to this day was spawned by the GM bailout and other interventions.

What about the weakening of the rule of law? Doesn’t the diversion of TARP funds by the Bush administration, in circumvention of congress’s wishes and in contravention of the language of the law, represent a cost? How about the property right of preferred bondholders who were forced to take pennies on their investment dollars under the Obama bankruptcy plan? Any costs there? What about U.S. moral authority to dissuade other goverments from meddling in their markets or indulging industrial policy? That may be costly to U.S. enterprises. And with the government still holding a third of GM, its hard to swallow the idea that public interest will be the driver of policies affecting the auto industry. And that suggests even more costs.

But don’t mistake this blog post for an anti-IPO rant. I’m in favor of the IPO. It couldn’t have happened sooner. But I suspect the investment bankers, the administration, and the other members of GM’s Board of Directors reckoned that, with the hype over the new Chevy Volt and the recent newsleak of GM’s $43 billion in unorthodox tax deferrments on the balance sheet, now was the perfect time to go public.

Reuters has helpfully published another article demonstrating that ObamaCare’s biggest cheerleaders are the insurance and drug industries. That’s because, barring repeal and despite the Obama administration’s fatuous rhetoric about standing up to the special interests, ObamaCare will shower those industries with massive subsidies. Excerpts follow.

Health Overhaul Should Press Ahead: Industry
By Susan Heavey

Thu Nov 11, 2010 1:39pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Repeal reform? No thanks, say health insurers, drugmakers and others looking for a clearer picture of the U.S. healthcare market after the bruising passage of the controversial overhaul law…

The new healthcare law created “a stable, predictable environment, however painful it has been in the short term,” GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s (GSK.L) Chief Strategy Officer David Redfern said at the summit in New York.

“When you are running a business, the hardest thing is changing policy and a changing environment because it is very difficult to plan, predict and ultimately invest in that sort of scenario,” he said, echoing other speakers.

True enough. How’s a firm supposed to develop a business plan around uncertain taxpayer subsidies?

Health officials must still hammer out how to implement the law and finalize hundreds of new rules and regulations. Many such details are key, as the sector looks to adjust its business for 2011 and beyond.

Wait, I thought the law created a “stable, predictable environment” and repeal would create uncertainty. Hmmmm.

“Anti-reform made good talking points before the election,” said the Department of Health and Human Services’ Liz Fowler, adding that people “will find more to like than to dislike” in the law once it is more in place.

Boy, they just won’t let go of that chestnut, will they? Remember: voters need re-education, not the Obama administration.

Even insurers, which were vilified by Democrats in passing the reforms, said they don’t want a repeal, even as they push for clarity on forthcoming rules and seek additional changes.

Cigna Corp CEO David Cordani and Aetna Inc President Mark Bertolini both urged the nation to move forward on the overhaul.

Even the insurance industry is against repeal? The folks whose products the law will force 200 million Americans to purchase? Neversaw thatcoming.